Marxism: best defence against media manipulation
British broadcasters win a High Court ruling against the police, a former Murdoch editor is arrested and the Leveson ‘inquiry’ into Press Standards meanders on: JJ Gaunt peeks behind the headlines and reviews two recent books critical of the media
On an 1886 tour promoting marxism and working class organisation in America, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling took time out to ridicule and denounce the US press in general and the Chicago Times and Chicago Tribune in particular for their lynch mob coverage of the trial of eight anarchists who had been fitted up by the state of Illinois and faced execution following the infamous Haymarket bomb incident.
More than 125 years and many technological leaps later, modern mass media remain at root little more than megaphones amplifying the ruling class’s ‘values’, its lies, its propaganda, when they are not simply selling its commodities.
Much effort is expended on the part of the ‘fourth estate’ to deny this reality and turn it on its head. Commenting on the High Court’s May 17 decision to overturn a Crown Court judge’s order to hand over unseen footage of the violent police eviction of ‘travellers’ from Dale Farm, Essex in 2011, ITN (Independent Television News) chief executive John Hardie said: "This landmark decision is a legal recognition of the separate roles of the police and independent news organisations. We fought this case on a matter of principle - to ensure that journalists and cameramen are not seen as agents of the state ...” Lawyers for other interested parties – they included the BBC, BSkyB and Channel 5 – had said their clients risked being seen as “coppers’ narks” (police informants) if they had complied with the original order. That would never do, as M’lud wisely agreed.
It also won’t do to have the working class and the rest of the population tune-out of the Murdoch ‘Hackgate’ scandal of criminality, bribery and corruption with the erroneous impression that the media, police and politicians are ‘all in it together’.
It’s to restore public faith in the media mafia that the Leveson Inquiry into Press Standards has been protracted long after the original British state objective of clipping Murdoch’s UK activities had been achieved. (1) With hoards of ‘witnesses’ either denouncing the ‘Evil Empire’ (viz ex-Sunday Times editor Harold Evans) or clumsily attempting to defend the indefensible (viz the testimony of the News International clan itself or the self-serving testimonies of former PM Blair and current Culture and Media Secretary Jeremy Hunt), the ‘inquiry’ has turned into a modern Inquisition to exorcise the devil Murdoch, the better to redeem the rest of the media.
In the same manner, it’s to demonstrate the state’s due ‘impartiality’ and incorruptible nature that the very particular friends of PM David Cameron - former News International golden child Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie, Cameron’s old school chum - were arrested and charged with the very serious offence (with apologies to AA Milne) of perverting the course of justice. (2)
These recent events featuring the UK state and its media apparatus are of course merely moments in an historic pattern – one long recognised by critics of the capitalist system. As Marx and Engels often argued, the ruling class’s particular interests are falsely presented as those of society as a whole. It’s the primary function of mass media to reflect and reinforce the resultant ‘dominant ideology’.
This material reality is illuminated and fleshed out in a recent and recommended book called Beyond the Left: The Communist Critique of the Media by UK lecturer Dr Stephen Harper (3).
His ‘Introduction: to guide and bind the world’ grabs the subject by the kishkas: “Having abolished scarcity and made communism possible by the early twentieth century, capitalism today is an obsolete system whose continuance offers humanity only increasing misery. As the social symptoms of this retrogression – poverty, starvation, holocausts, environmental degradation and economies increasingly based upon drugs, arms and gangsterism – become more difficult to disguise, the media play a vital role, it is argued here, in concealing their systemic origins.”
To this egregious end, the 1928 publication of Propaganda by Edward Bernays, American nephew of Sigmund Freud and known variously as the ‘king of spin’ and ‘the father of public relations’, constituted “a direct response to the socio-economic impasses of US capitalism in the 1920s, as a dearth of new markets, a crisis of over-production and the lingering menace of proletarian revolution forced capitalists to devise ever more ingenious methods of mass persuasion...”
One of the media’s most enduring successes in this regard is revealed in the chapter ‘Normalising the unthinkable: news media as state propaganda’ in which Harper notes how the very notion of wage labour – once widely understood as “an outrage against humanity whose essential continuity with earlier forms of bondage found expression! in the now antiquated phrase ‘wage slavery’” - is today throughout the mainstream media “accepted as a fact of life”. “Thus, in a period of austerity, the BBC’s Sunday morning television discussion programme The Big Question asks ‘Is It Time For A Maximum Wage?’ (13 March 2010); but it cannot question the legitimacy of the wages system itself.”
Within this marxist framework, which draws on the analyses of past and present day revolutionary organisations (including the ICC and ICT) and recognises both the decadence of capitalism and the primacy of the nation state over ‘supra-national corporations’, Harper’s other chapters include ‘Not neoliberalism: why the state is still the enemy’; ‘Blaming the victims, eroding solidarity: two media discourses on immigration’; ‘”The only honourable course’’: the media and ‘humanitarian’ war’ and ‘Beyond the news: popular culture against the working class’.
Under such headings he utilises the insights of social critics, media researchers and academics from Althusser to Žižek whilst acknowledging their limitations: Harper both quotes approvingly from Herman and Chomsky’s seminal Manufacturing Consent (1998) while roundly denouncing Chomsky for “the statism of his concrete political attachments” (today, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez; yesterday, North Vietnam’s Stalinist Vietcong).
Before dissecting specific events and gauging what the ruling class accomplished from them (the chapter ‘Bogeyman at the BBC: Nick Griffin, Question Time and the ‘fascist threat’’ is exemplary in this regard) Harper insists that “The power of media propaganda to shape our perceptions of the most fundamental aspects of our lives is exercised neither haphazardly nor clumsily”, thus underlining that the bourgeoisie acts consciously against the proletariat, its potential gravedigger.
For the working class, the author insists that there’s nothing to choose between different media ‘slants’: “...the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels ... was excited by the BBC’s ability to maintain the trust of the British public and to have secured a worldwide reputation for the British media as ‘honest, free and truthful.’ Goebbels understood that this made the BBC the perfect propaganda vehicle. Today, as then, the left-liberal media act not as a foil to capitalism but as its last ditch defence, preventing those who reject conservative political positions from accessing or developing radical ideas. In fact, right-wing and left-wing media can be argued to work not in opposition to each other, but in tandem.”
The role of the media and the ‘pluralistic’ division of labour within it as cheerleaders of imperialist war and mystifiers of the gravity of today’s ecological crisis are also explored and expanded upon. For communists and activists of all stripes, Harper’s work is both required reading and an encouraging sign that proletarian perspectives are today spreading to and being embellished by wider layers of society.
Another book – there’s a veritable overproduction of them! – attempting to critique the media is NEWSPEAK in the 21st Century (4), a title recalling George Orwell’s 1984, a satire of mind control by an omnipresent state apparatus. This work also insists that media such as newspapers – including and particularly those which claim to be ‘independent’, ‘left’ or just righteous and liberal – all owe their origins, development and continued survival as vehicles for corporate advertisers on whose revenue they depend and whose patronage they cannot truly offend. Similarly, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has since its foundation in the 1920s been first and foremost an obedient servant of the state’s overall interests as it demonstrated in the 1926 national strike and ever since.
The work is penned by two co-editors of a an organisation called Media Lens which challenges journalists, editors and broadcasters to justify their censorship, sins of omission and downright war-mongering, while providing e-mails to subscribers which highlight examples of the media’s latest outrages.
Indeed, NEWSPEAK reminds us all that facts are not ‘sacred’ but chosen according to taste and ideology while ‘objectivity’ is a nonsense – “nothing is neutral”. In addition it provides a salutary reminder of the depth and extent of the lies, dissembling and patriotic cheerleading around the build-up to the ‘allied’ invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation. It recalls how, as “a shoal of fish instantly changes direction ... as though the movement was synchronised by some guiding hand,” British journalists “all trained and selected for obedience by media all seeking to maximise profits within state capitalist society ... appeared [in 1999] to conclude independently that war on Serbia was a rational, justified response to a ‘genocide’ in Kosovo that had not in fact taken place. In 2002-03, many journalists concluded that war was necessary to tackle an Iraqi threat that did not exist. And yet, to our knowledge, in 2009, not a single journalist proposed military action in response to Israel’s staggering, very visible crimes against the besieged civilian population of Gaza.” The authors demonstrate how the media is again banging the drum for what they say is to be ‘the West’s’ next imperialist adventure: the bombing and possible invasion of Iran.
Similarly, this well-researched and documented work points out the staggering hypocrisy of media demanding ‘action’ over climate chaos as they carry adds promoting cheap flights, powerful motor cars and oil company claims to be forging a ‘cleaner, greener, fossil fuel-free future’.
However, such valid observations are undermined by NEWSPEAK’s own contradictions: despite declaring that ‘democracy’ is “a charade serving privilege and power” its description of the Iraqi slaughter as “an illegal war of aggression” (aren’t all wars ‘aggressive’ and exactly what’s with the fetish of bourgeois legality?); the references to ‘consumerism’ rather than capitalism; to ‘the people’ rather than the working class, etc, speak of an incoherence which ultimately favours the status quo. Equally problematic is the tendency to deal with countries, rather than classes. For example, irrespective of the nuclear issue (the pretext for ‘the West’s’ aggression towards Iran), there’s no mention of the Tehran regime’s own regional imperialist aims and incursions, while the praise lavished by the authors on the state machine of Venezuela’s Chávez is frankly an embarrassment.
These and other elements indicate a set of analyses that fall within the framework of capitalist social relations as do the proposed solutions: the alleged need for ‘awareness, compassion and honest journalism.’ They are not truly radical because they do not go to the roots of the issue. Let’s end with Stephen Harper: “... the radical task is not to ‘work with’ the media industries and their regulatory bodies in order to campaign for ‘better’ media representations of the working class, or to defend so-called ‘public service’ media organisations against the encroachments of the market, but – through what Marx called ‘ruthless criticism’ – to expose the ruses of capitalism’s representational apparatuses until such time as they can be overthrown.”
JJ Gaunt 6/12
Footnotes
Report on the Manchester Meeting of the CWO
The document that follows (Beyond Protest) is based on the notes of the introductory speaker for the CWO’s Manchester meeting on April 21. The meeting was also attended by members of the ICC and the Anarchist Federation as well as individual council communists and left communists.
The meeting was held in a fraternal manner with all seriously trying to grapple with the problem of the development of a wider class movement. The ICC comrade who replied first quoted extensively from the editorial in the last Revolutionary Perspectives (60) and stated that the ICC fully supported the introduction. He also agreed with the criticism of the democratist illusions of Occupy and emphasised the fact that it is only the international working class which can make the revolution. He also stressed that the working class still had to break out of union dominated ideology to face up to the crisis of today. He took heart from the Unilever strike analysed in RP60 as it was a place he knew well where paternalism had dominated the workforce for generations so it was good to see that even here workers were beginning to see through the system’s ideology.
A Manchester comrade then took up the point about how the working class which has no property to defend can materially alter its consciousness in the current situation and this became the main focus of much of the rest of the discussion. He argued that workers in struggle tended to reinforce their own embedding within the system and thus their struggles did not tend to develop their consciousness in a more general way. He gave the example of Greece where, despite the draconian cuts they had not yet found a way to resist. The only sign he had seen was that some people had started to take over hospitals but even this was fraught with problems. In Britain he pointed to the fact that the TUC is already using the idea of “solidarity” to get workers to accept some cuts.
Against this rather depressing view the meeting agreed that it was a real question sincerely posed but various comrades countered it by putting forward the notion that the acquisition of class consciousness was a process and we were only at the “starting line” as one comrade put it. Others pointed to the past history of the workers’ movement that just when the working class is written off as a historical force it suddenly proves everyone including revolutionaries wrong. The example of 1914 when the working class marched off in universal support for imperialist war only to begin the greatest revolutionary wave in history less than three years later stood out as an example of how class consciousness can be changed by material circumstances. In the current crisis the cuts had still yet to really hit home and all past indicators suggest that there is no immediate reaction to such things but only after a time lag when the actual burden of the new situation builds up.
In the meantime it was the task for revolutionaries to not only generalise any struggle but to point the way forward in the line of march towards greater class actions. Whilst some comrades were more eloquent in expressing a militant hatred of the capitalist system and its consequences which they could hardly wait to be ended the meeting agreed that class consciousness would be developed gradually through the increasing alienation from a system which could do nothing but attack us. It was also agreed that revolutionary consciousness would not arise overnight and that a degree of patience would be required. Class consciousness could not be developed by the revolutionary minority through a mere act of will. If there was a low level of class consciousness generally there was not a lot revolutionaries can do (as the last 40 years prove). As the Committee of Intesa wrote back in 1925 you cannot build a revolutionary movement “through expedients and tactical manoeuvres”. The sorry history of Trotskyism since 1938 is evidence enough for that.
There were also a couple of discussions which could be described as nominalist. The first was over the question of “party” and “revolutionary minority”. Whilst the ICT was quite happy to use the term “party” in terms of a class conscious political organisation it was recognised that for some (following Ruhle et al) the term had negative connotations given the experiences of the last revolutionary wave. Similarly the idea of “intervention” was a word imported from Italian and French comrades where it is common to describe any one individual’s contribution, but in English gives the unfortunate impression of someone speaking from outside the class. In both cases it was concluded that it is not so much the word but the idea behind it that was important and like our idea of “communism” itself such terms would always require explanation in order to clarify their content.
The only minor disagreement was when an ICC comrade said that things were changing and you would not have got the Communist Left addressing some sectors of internationalist anarchism ten years ago as today. The CWO comrades pointed out that they had worked with anarchists for twenty years in anti-parliamentary campaigns and No War But the Class War. The key dividing line in the current period was more about accepting an anti-capitalist revolutionary agenda and rejection of all types of reformism put forward by the left of capitalism. Whilst the Communist Left organisations were all agreed on this the problem was that not all anarchists understood this.
However this was minor issue in what was a positive meeting undertaken in a comradely spirit and we hope that future meetings will not only welcome more participants but also carry this level of discussion further.
Beyond Protest Manchester
For those of us who have dedicated almost all their adult lives to struggling for a movement which to bring about proletarian emancipation these are suddenly interesting times. Obviously they are not yet interesting times for most of the working class or there would be more people here to discuss how we can go “Beyond Protest” but there is no doubt that the speculative bubble which had been swelling for more than two decades until it burst in 2007-8 has been a major shock to the capitalist system, revealing it for what it truly is.
The collapse did not come as a shock to us. A young American sympathiser recently got back in touch with us on our website and reminded us what we wrote to him in December 2006.
“The current speculative bubble which is distorting real capital values cannot last forever, and if the system goes through a new global crash, the working class will need to have organised instruments in place in order to fight the authoritarian barbaric solutions which the capitalists will themselves put forward.”
Well it is still early in this crisis to yet see outright barbarism but what is going on in Syria is not far off it. However we should also point out that this crisis did not start in 2007 or 2008 but when we older comrades were young. It was the end of the post-war boom that brought our generation into the communist movement. More precisely it was the resistance of the working class to that crisis in the lat 60s and early 70s which encouraged us not to join the traditional left but to found in Britain at least a new communist movement.
The key facts of the last 4 decades are that capitalism despite trying Keynesianism, monetarism and neo-liberalism has been unable to get out of its stagnation. This has been because to really start a new round of accumulation it would need destroy an enormous amount of value. But to do this it would have to inflict austerity the like of which we have not seen since the Thirties and which would provoke social confrontations to threaten the system or else a new global war would do the trick excerpt the consequences for the capitalist are so incalculable in the era of nuclear weapons that this too would threaten their long term survival (and that is all they think about bugger the rest of us). The speculative bubble based on massive debt was their last trick and now that has burst the prospects for capitalism are indeed dire. Indeed we can currently see no other future for it but more of the same – stagnation, austerity, bailing out the banks to keep the system ticking over. Even the Governor of the B of E is talking of a lost decade. Lenin said there was no situation which capitalism could not get out of but the current situation is a bigger impasse than any we have seen so far. Managed decline is the course that has been chosen in the Micawberish hope that something will turn up. In the meantime speculation is once again being rehabilitated (but on commodities and currencies and not on housing and real estate).
The only other policy they have got is austerity – cuts upon cuts. We have already seen plenty of these. Everyone has there own favourite stats on the crisis but the ones we have printed in our latest Aurora from various sources give us a flavour.
“According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies:
•This year’s tax changes mean the ‘average family’ will lose £511 per year.
•A nominal increase in the minimum wage will leave it lower in real terms than it was in 2004. The government has taken the Low Pay Commission’s advice to freeze the minimum wage for young people from October. [£4.98 per hour for18-20 year olds, £3.68 for16-17 yr olds above school leaving age but under 18. The ‘apprentice rate’, for under 19s or 19+ and in the first year of apprenticeship will rise by 5p to £2.65 per hour.]
•Inflation has also outstripped average income growth, leaving workers worse off in real terms. The Institute forecasts that real net income of the average household will be lower in 2015-16 than in 2002-3.
Meanwhile the TUC estimates:
•By April 2013 families on working tax credit may lose more than £4,000 from changes to the credit system while 1.6m council workers will have their pay frozen for a third year in a row.
Consumer Focus estimates:
•4 million people have a Pay Day loan. A ‘typical’ monthly repayment on £100 is about £130 but higher interest rates, up to 5,000% p.a. are far from unknown. Tony Hobman, chief executive of the Money Advice Service, a government agency to help people in debt, is paid £250,000 a year before bonuses.
The ‘Institute of Health Equity’ at UCL reports:
•The gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest has widened in most areas of England. The largest gap is for males in Westminster where average life expectancy of the richest is 84 but for the poorest the average is 16.9 years less.
The ONS latest employment figures show:
•The drop in unemployment is entirely due to the growth in part-time work.”
And on top of this we have to realise that over 90% of the planned cuts have not yet hit us.
Little wonder that we have seen movements like the Occupy and Indignados taking to the streets in scores of countries across the world. And little wonder that the bosses paper the FT keeps writing articles wondering at how they are getting away with it without greate social unrest. The important thing about the Occupy movement more than anything else is that it has raised a political agenda. Everyone now talks about “capitalism”. 5 years ago it was only the “nutters” of the Communist Left who used that kind of archaic language. And this is important since we can have al the economic struggles you like but unless they raise a political dimension they are something the system can accept and cope with. The Occupy movement has also questioned the hierarchical nature of society and its structures. Its open forums have shown how discussions can increase people’s confidence and widen their horizons. Our comrades have been able to participate in them in various countries. In Rome for example our comrades have been asked to organise a school of Marxism so that people read Capital in an attempt to understand the real crisis.
However before it sounds like we are getting over-enthusiastic about the Occupy and Indignados movements we also have to recognise their limitations. On a political level, the ‘anti-capitalism’ of Occupy, like the Occupy movement itself, has no coherency or substance. When questioned about the meaning of anti-capitalism most Occupy protesters would say they are against the banks and multinational corporations. But there is no economic critique of capitalism and no understanding of why capitalism will inevitably create these hated institutions. The Occupy Wall Street website states on its home page:
OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to fight back against the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.
This sort of reformist perspective to ‘democratise capitalism’ in line with groups like UK Uncut who think that capitalism could be fair if only the government made the bourgeoisie pay their taxes, seems to be as close as the Occupy movement gets to having any political perspective at all. Such demands for a fair and democratic capitalism are rooted in petty bourgeois utopianism and serve only to peddle illusions about what is possible under capitalism, illusions that the working class must dispel if it is ever to wage an effective struggle against capital.
This brings us to the question of class. This is an issue that the Occupy movement chooses to gloss over, or perhaps even to deliberately obscure. Of course the inequality that exists in society is at the heart of what the Occupy movement opposes, but this is conceptualised in terms of the 1% of those that own and control the world’s wealth, compared to the 99% who don’t. This may be graphic representation of that inequality but it is just presented as a given, the consequence perhaps of the power of greedy bankers or megalomaniac multi-nationals. The fundamental point that capitalism is a class society based on the exploitation of the proletarian majority by the bourgeois minority is neatly overlooked, as this would undermine the Occupy movement’s utopian demands for a fair and democratic capitalism. Those who hold a Marxist understanding of the need for a revolutionary transformation of society led by the working class as the prime agent of change recognise that ther is no such thing as a fair and democratic capitalism.
So what is to be done?
The working class owns only the individual capacity to labour. It has no system of property to defend. For previous rising classes the question of revolutionary change was no problem. All they had to do was defend their form of property in every way they could and they coalesced into a movement which challenged the old order. The bourgeoisie in their struggle could even engender slogans which made it appear as though they we re fighting for all humanity (liberty, fraternity and equality). What they didn’t tell the workers was that equality was only for those who could afford it. In bourgeois society Orwell’s nostrum that some are more equal than others is a daily fact.
The only other weapon the working class possesses is its consciousness. This is nurtured and formed by its own struggles from its position in capitalist society but these sparks of consciousness rise now here now there and then die with the struggle. How can the perceptions of workers in struggle be carried from one point to the next? Marx was aware of the problem. He knew that the emancipation of the working class was “the task of the workers themselves” yet he also wrote that under capitalist conditions the ruling ideas are those who own the means of production, including intellectual production.
How to escape the dilemma – the political party.
The solution to the dilemma lies in the formation of a revolutionary minority or party if you like. This turns the consciousness of those individuals within the working class who already see what is at stake into a material force. A material force which fights within the wider working class to increase both the depth and the extent of its class consciousness. This revolutionary minority is entirely consistent with Marx’s own vision of a future international party. Many people quote Marx’s insertion into the rules of the IWMA in 1864 the nostrum that “the emancipation of the working class will be the task of the workers themselves”. What they usually claim is that this shows that Marx was against the idea of a revolutionary minority altogether. But this is an error. After all why would Marx include this in the rules of the International if it was an anti-party statement. What he meant here was that the workers had to forge their own organisations independent of all the bourgeois parties. Without an organisation representing the historic acquisitions of the working class the bourgeoisie will be capable of imposing its own solution on any movement however militant.
However Marx could not have envisaged all the false starts that the workers movement would make on its road to emancipation.
The revolutionary minority we have in mind will have to be unlike any other produced in the past. In the first place it will not fall into the social democratic error of trying to have a mass party which can only be achieved by capitulating to the immediate demands for reform and take on a parliamentary agenda.
Professional revolutionaries are not the answer either. This was advocated by Lenin for the Bolshevik Party when it was clandestine and under the brutal Tsarist dictatorship. He wanted revolutionaries to be “professional” in sense of not being bunglers who betrayed themselves and the workers to the secret police. We are against it for several historical reasons. Having party organisers who are employees mean they can be disciplined by the mere act of cutting their source of salary as Gramsci did to defeat the Italian Left majority in the Communist Party of Italy in the 1920s. However there is also another profound reason for not accepting this model and that is that the class party has to be a party of the class and the members remain with the class either in the workplace or in the community.
There were some good things about Bolshevism: before 1917 it was obviously an organisation which not only had a wide ranging debate but encouraged individual initiative at the local level and within workers’ organisations. It was its roots inside the working class established well before the revolution that were the key to its decision to drop its social democratic programme in April 1917.
Obviously though the next revolution will not be a rerun of the revolutionary wave of 90 years ago. Obviously too we have to learn from the errors of the revolutionaries of the past.
We have catalogued those of the Bolsheviks many times. On Day One Sovnarkom was set up which was really just a bourgeois cabinet with another name. The real revolutionary ruling body should have been the Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets. Other examples are well-known. In June-July 1918 soviet elections in Petrograd were rigged for the first time and the isolation of the revolution and the continuing social democratic ideas about socialism which still lingered in Bolshevism ensured by 1921 that the class had disappeared and the party was the class. Anarchists have used these errors to argue that all along Bolshevism was a plot to defeat the spontaneous revolution of the working class. But the anarchists themselves lacked cohesion and organisation – personalities rather than polices dominated. When the Bolsheviks rigged the Petrograd soviet elections in 1918 it was to keep out the reaction not to prevent a move to a third revolution. And this is why some anarchist alter recognised that they had failed too and decided that they too needed organisation and a Platform which they produced in 1926. This remains controversial amongst anarchists, even to this day, but it is a recognition that a revolutionary minority is needed. And today the Anarchist Federation carries in its paper an outline of revolutionary action and organisation that is not too distant from our own. Similarly we have read on the ICC website of a group called the Birov Collective which calls itself anarcho-syndicalist but it s ideas of syndicates are very close to ours of workplace groups as both are essentially political in character (this contrast with the Solidarity Federation in the UK) . Today the debate is not between Anarchism and Marxism but between revolutionaries from both camps and the traditional left which are all based on the restoration in one form or another of social democracy.
From the Russian Revolution we take the lessons that to make the revolution the class will have to create a rev minority which is the material expression of it consciousness. That minority will fight in the class wide organs for the communist programme but being a minority it cannot wield power. As Onorato Damen wrote in the platform of the PCInt after the break with Bordiga “the working class does not delegate its power to any one not even its class party”. And the revolutionary minority has other tasks than to rule in any one geographical area – spreading the world revolution takes precedence and if its members are elected to posts of responsibility they are elected on the same basis as other delegates i.e. revocably.
Today we are seeing the beginning of a revival of an anti-capitalist consciousness. It is only a beginning but those of us who have been fighting for a revolutionary class outcome all our lives have an enormous responsibility to the new generation. Up to now communist have separated over issues largely of historical creation. Past errors have become current shibboleths. Rather than a source of understanding history has largely been a nightmare weighing on the living and magnifying differences which are hardly ever properly explored. Today we are on the edge of new situation and we need to re-examine our practices. We have been saying for many months that the issue is not just to fight the cuts but to fight the system that produces them. This is the starting point for all revolutionaries and we have declared ourselves willing to work with anyone who shares that basic premise. Out of common work comes common respect, out of respect comes real dialogue, and out of that a more effective working class resistance.
Jock
Monday, June 11, 2012
<출처> http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-06-11/report-on-the-manchester-meeting-of-the-cwo
-임성용
진보의 남용
-오세철
모든 일이 한꺼번에 벌어져 난마처럼 얽혀 있다. 한편에서 통합진보당 당원명부 압수수색이 방송 매체의 화면을 뒤덮는 동안, 다른 한편에선 ‘노동해방실천연대’ 사회주의자들의 국가보안법 위반 혐의 긴급체포가 언론의 주목을 받지 못하고 이루어졌다. 그런가 하면 22명의 쌍용차 노동자의 죽음을 추모하는 국민대회를 연 대책위를 사법처리하겠다는 검경의 엄포가 쌍용차 노동자들을 두 번 죽이고 있다.
이것이 자유민주주의 국가를 소리 높여 외쳐대는 이른바 선진자본주의 국가 대한민국의 벌거벗은 모습이다. 그 틈을 비집고 이명박 정권 말기의 공안정국을 향한 발톱이 다시 흉측하게 드러나고 있으며, 보수·진보 언론을 막론하고 시대착오적인 진보재구성 논쟁이 사람들의 눈과 귀를 막고 있다.
이 모든 사태의 본질은 무엇인가? 그것은 역사적이고 상대적 의미를 갖는 ‘진보’ 개념을 상투적으로 남용하는 문제이고, 형식으로서의 절차적 민주주의와 내용으로서의 실질적 민주주의를 분리하는 비변증법적 관념론의 문제이다. 마르크스가 160여년 전 <공산주의선언>을 썼을 때, 그는 자본주의를 진보적이라고 보았다. 그러면서도 자유로운 개인이 연합하는 새로운 생산양식의 건설을 인류의 물질적 필연성으로 보았다. 1차 세계대전을 정점으로 쇠퇴하는 자본주의를 넘어서는 길목에서 혁명가와 노동계급은 “사회주의냐, 전쟁이냐”를 외쳤다. 그리고 100년이 지난 지금 세계자본주의는 그 모순이 극에 달해 ‘야만인가’ ‘사회주의인가’를 선택해야 하는 운명에 놓여 있다. 자본주의 쇠퇴라는 객관적 사실과 노동계급의 억압을 뚫고 솟구치는 투쟁을 목도하면서 한가롭게 진보를 외치거나 새로운 진보를 내세우는 것은 손바닥으로 하늘을 가리는 일이다.
민족주의는 사회주의와 대립한다. 1차 세계대전 당시 독일 사회주의세력이 조국의 깃발을 들고 전쟁터에 수많은 노동자들을 몰아넣어 살해했을 때, 그 후 나치즘과 스탈린주의가 ‘사회주의’ 탈을 쓰고 노동계급을 억압·착취했을 때, 민족주의는 노동계급의 국제주의를 가로막는 반혁명적 이데올로기가 됐다. 통합진보당은 강령에서 사회주의를 삭제함으로써 스스로 ‘진보’의 깃발을 내렸기 때문에 우리는 그들을 진보라 부르지 않는다. 비당권파가 사회민주주의적 색깔을 일부 지녔다고 해도 그들 역시 진보로 부르기 어렵다. 민족주의와 사회민주주의는 동전의 양면이기 때문이다.
일부 진보논객이 ‘민족해방’과 ‘노동해방’을 말하는 세력을 민주주의를 외면하는 추상적 혁명주의로 매도하는 논거와 태도는 두 가지 점에서 해괴한 논리다. 첫째, 민족주의는 21세기 자본주의 체제 내에서 더 이상 혁명주의가 아니다. 민족주의는 오히려 자본주의를 공고히 해 왔고, 파시즘의 위험을 내재하고 있기 때문이다. 둘째, 부르주아 민주주의와 노동자 민주주의는 전혀 다른 개념이고 대립한다는 사실이다. 혁명주의는 형식적 민주절차만 강조하는 부르주아 독재에 반대하고 형식과 내용이 통일되는 노동자 민주주의를 옹호한다. 이번 통진당 사태는 노동자 민주주의를 저버렸다는 점에서 비판받아 마땅하고 혁명주의와는 아무런 관련도 없음을 밝혀야 한다.
물론 우리는 사상의 자유, 표현의 자유를 억압하는 희대의 악법인 국가보안법의 폐지를 주장한다. 모든 공안 탄압을 반대하고 맞서 싸워야 한다. 그렇다고 선거를 통해 의회에 진출하려는 정치세력의 선거부정을 묵과해서는 안된다. 오히려 우리는 밑으로부터의 직접민주주의를 실현하며 막바지에 다다른 자본주의를 근본적으로 넘어서는 새로운 사회의 건설로 나아가야 한다. 이른바 ‘진보의 재구성’이란 이름으로 개량주의와 혁명주의를 구분하고 자본주의의 틀 안에 노동계급을 가두는 개량주의를 넘어서는 혁명적 실천을 모색할 때다.
<경향신문 오피니언 기고>
The Eurozone Crisis:There is an Alternative but it is not on Any Electoral List
The British Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson once famously remarked that a week is a long time in politics. And indeed it is amazing how quickly the capitalist class can forget. Take how the current phase of the crisis really started. If you read the financial commentators or listen to politicians in any country today, whether in the UK, US or Europe itself you would think the world crisis of capitalism was due to workers living it up in luxurious welfare states that now can’t be paid for!
Political and Economic Paralysis in Europe Continues
From Greece to Portugal via Italy and Spain the Southern European debt crisis is put down to lazy workers and tax-dodging petty bourgeois. To hammer this home numerous journals have printed quotations from “a (usually anonymous) worker” agreeing that “we all lived beyond our means”. They seem to have forgotten that it was the bursting (initially in the US) of a financial bubble created by bonus-bagging bankers and financiers that started it all. The banks and big financial institutions had to be bailed out by the state because they were “too big to fail”. It was this bailout which saddled the governments of Europe (and not just Europe) with their current “unsustainable” borrowing costs.
But even this does not get to the root cause of the crisis. States everywhere bailed out the financial system in order to save the entire capitalist order. The last twenty years of financial speculation came about because the whole system was already in deep crisis. This was a crisis of accumulation of capital which began in the 1970s. When other “solutions” like nationalisation and deficit financing failed to re-start accumulation to the post-war boom levels the capitalist crisis could only take one course. It evolved in traditional fashion towards speculation which Marx frequently equated with “swindling” in Capital Volume III.[1]
But speculating on the basis of arbitrary values attached to “assets” which were only assets on paper could only be sustained by the pretence that this fictitious capital was actually based on real production values. In fact it was based on a mountain of debt which extended down to the least capable of paying it in society.
This, paradoxically, was a useful alibi when the crash came. It made it so much easier to play on the “we are all in this together” lie. And haven’t our masters done well? After four years of increasing austerity to “bring down the debt” global banking debt has not substantially shrunk. According to the Bank of International Settlements, it remains at $22,347,200,000,000 [see bis.org] nor has the speculative trade in so-called derivatives. Indeed the latter (which are a form of hedging against future losses) continues to grow. In June 2009 total contracts were valued at $594.5 trillion but for the latest quarter for which data are available this is now $707,569, 000,000,000. [See bis.org]. It is not just bankers’ bonuses which have been safeguarded by state intervention but the whole game of financial speculation itself. The derivative debts are not only not unwinding but have expanded by $100 trillions in the last six months alone. This is more extreme in some states than in others.
As always the Anglo-Saxons continue to play hardest in the financial game with the UK being the only large state in the EU to increase banking debts in the last year. As Robert Peston affirmed at the end of last year
One other slightly surprising and - perhaps - disturbing trend is that the debt of financial institutions has risen, from 205% of GDP to 210% of GDP.[2]
And UK capitalism can do little else. Having drastically reduced the manufacturing sector to a point where it counts for only an eighth of GDP it is desperately reliant on the financial sector if it is to get any GDP growth. And this is why the eurozone crisis hits home here too. If the Eurozone economy stagnates how can the British banking sector find new financial and speculative games to play (or “provide banking services” as the British ruling class like to call it)? [3]
Add to that the debt question. Amongst the so-called PIIGS the UK has not much exposure to Greek or Spanish debt but is very exposed to Portuguese and Irish debt. If they default (and both survive on IMF and Eurozone handouts) then the British banking sector will also arrive at an absolutely unsustainable point. And rising debt in relation to GDP is unstoppable as far as the richer economies of the world are concerned. According to a recent report on ‘deleveraging’ (i.e. reducing debt):
Total debt has actually grown across the world’s ten largest mature economies since the 2008–09 financial crisis, due mainly to rising government debt. Moreover, the
ratio of total debt to GDP has declined in only three countries in our sample:
the United States, South Korea, and Australia.
In terms of percentage of GDP to debt the UK tops the world’s debt league. UK aggregate debt has now gone beyond 500% of GDP, closely followed by Japan. For Spain the percentage is over 300%.[4]
The Capitalist Choice
And to try to get these under control they have only one policy. It is to make the working class pay in cuts in welfare, health spending, wages, pensions and jobs. But as we wrote in Revolutionary Perspectives 59
Austerity is resulting precisely in the opposite of what was intended*[5]*
As the working class are thrown out of work, as welfare is cut so the economy contracts and government revenues diminish and so borrowing increases. The debts of the all countries, but particularly the so-called PIIGS, continues to rise and only further debt forgiveness and international bailouts will be needed.
Meanwhile the agony for millions increases daily. The latest unemployment figures given in the Guardian [1.5.2012] show that:
Across the European Union, there are now 24.7 million men and women out of work.
Within the eurozone, the youth unemployment rate jumped to 22.1% from 20.6%, with 3.345m adults under the age of 25 out of work.
ADD GRAPH[S]
Spain and Greece have unemployment amongst under 25s of over 50%. Even in Italy it has reached 36%. And this is official. What would it be like if all those in temporary, casual and part-time work were taken into account? Given that the general forecast is for this to last a decade we are looking at a lost generation. On top of that across Europe millions of families have reached a desperate situation with some families drowning under debt which continues to mount. Suicides are already on the increase in Greece and Italy in particular.[6] In Greece the average fall in family income over the last four years has been at 30%. Many families with children have only ?10 a day to spend on food and many will never get out of debt.[7]
The total bankruptcy (if we can be forgiven the irony) of the cuts policy has dented the confidence of the apostles of austerity. Amongst the global ruling class what could be described as the neo-Keynesians are making a comeback. Headed by economists like James Krugman and Larry Summers they are now pointing to the futility of current policy and calling for “stimulus”. And, taking their tone from this, the social democrats, in Britain and France particularly, are pretending they have a new policy to soften the blow of austerity. To many debt-laden and poverty-stricken workers who are totally cynical about the political establishment it seems a worth a try. It cannot be worse than the present.
It is however based on sand and in any case in real terms is not an alternative. The foundations of Keynesianism is deficit financing. The state borrows money (or just prints it) to invest now in projects which create jobs for workers who are then able to give a boost to spending (the so-called multiplier effect) and we get the magical growth. What this forgets is that historically Keynesian policies have only been applied after years of austerity have got down government borrowing. Now however the states are all saddled with so much debt how can they launch a policy for growth based on further deficit financing? These states will find it difficult to finance some of their borrowing through bonds issues to investors (i.e. big financial institutions) who are already running scared of sovereign debt! As it is they are already pursuing a policy of quantitative easing (printing money) just to give to the banks to keep the system going. Once this sort of money gets into circulation then the Merkel Weimar inflation nightmare will be the reality.
Bankrupt Policies on Offer
In fact, the politicians like Ed Balls and Francois Holland who are offering “change” or to do something different, are only offering to postpone austerity for a year or so longer than their right wing opponents. The idea of launching a policy for growth via the financing (on borrowed or printed money) of new infrastructure will only exacerbate the problem. In truth every segment of our ruling class has no better policy for getting out of the capitalist mess we are in than Charles Dickens’ Wilkins Micawber. But desperate voters will probably buy into it. Labour’s success in the local elections in the UK (albeit 7 out of 10 voters did not even go to the polls) and Hollande’s victory in the French Presidential elections are both signs of this. But nothing will change for workers as a result.
Down the road more desperate solutions are on offer. The extreme right is on the rise proposing “simple” if illusory solutions. For them unemployment and falling earnings are not consequences of the failure of the capitalist system but due to the European Union and immigration. In the Greek situation our comrades have already raised the alarm over the rise of xenophobic and ultra-nationalist alliances which have sprung up as the crisis is increasingly portrayed as one “Made in Germany”.[8] The likes of Golden Dawn in Greece which has now entered parliament for the first time (with 21 seats), Geert Wilders party in the Netherlands and, not least, the National Front in France have all stepped up the anti-immigrant and anti-EU message. In Greece the thugs of Golden Dawn, like the Nazis they ape, will start to make life more hellish for immigrants than it is already. The more subtle Marine Le Pen hopes to build on Sarkozy’s failure by splitting his party over the issues of immigration and crime in order to make the National Front the main party of the right. Playing the “national” card comes naturally for our ruling class. The “we are all in it together” and sacrifices are needed for the “good of the country” messages are all aimed at diverting attention away from the fact that the working class are paying for the ruling class to continue enjoying the fruits of our exploitation. No doubt the political climate will get nastier. Our Greek comrades have tried to counteract this growing nationalism with an appeal to both German and Greek workers. This has been distributed in its thousands and has been well-received in factories in Germany.[9] The leaflet shows that the working class in Germany have already paid and are still paying for the “economic miracle”.
The other side of the German “economic miracle” of the last decade are the shrinking wages of the population dependent on employment, because they have paid and are still paying the price of “improving the competitiveness” of the German economy. Real wages of German workers are falling year by year and companies’ profits “inflate” constantly. Purchasing power is now well below inflation. 7 million (about 20% of the workforce) work part-time under fixed-term contracts (“mini-jobs”), with monthly earnings below 400 euros and without insurance. While real wages have declined over the last 10 years, banks have increased their profits by 39%.
And this is what the ruling class everywhere want for us all. Take the following piece on the eve of the French Presidential election from Josef Joffe in the Financial Times [3 May]
Francois Hollande is odds-on favourite to win the French Presidency, a bleak prospect for all but new Keynesians and old socialists. … he should take the lead from his fellow social democrat, Gerhard Schröder.
Why the former German chancellor? Because he dared tell his own electorate what neither Mr Hollande nor Nicholas Sarkozy would have uttered even on the rack. Nine years ago, Mr Schröder warned his country: reduce social benefits, loosen up labour markets and accept individual responsibility – or else. Then he carried through with his “Agenda 2010”. And lo, Germany went from zero to 3 per cent growth in the two years before the crash – and back to 3 per cent thereafter.[10]
Today German workers are no better off but the mass of surplus value they create has given weapons for the likes of Merkel to use in trying to force through more austerity. And as our comrades point out the problem is the same everywhere.
Elections or Real Change?
Since the crisis broke 4 years ago twelve governments in the major capitalist states have been replaced including those in Greece and France this month (May 2012).
Elections, as the article from a French comrade which follows this makes clear, are only the means by which the ruling class get us to give them legitimacy. By nominally choosing our rulers we become accomplices in what they do to us. The options on offer from our rulers are increasingly narrowing. For us the electoral choice the capitalist class offers is like that of the concentration camp – either death by overwork or through starvation. Greek workers have naturally tried to avoid such a choice as the election results there showed. Despite it being illegal not to vote more than a third of the electorate did not do so. Those that did vote (in contrast to France) massively abandoned the social democrats of PASOK for those left parties who oppose the deal with the EU. Hollande won in France for promising to renegotiate the European stability pact but PASOK was almost wiped out for accepting the EU terms for its bailout.
That apart the Greek election result gave no clear indication as to a course of action for the Greek ruling class. Indeed the stand-off in Greece is almost a metaphor for the whole world economy. The difference is that Greeks are already experiencing what we will all face in years to come. In fact the Greek elections only confirm! the economic and political impasse of capitalism today. The state of the crisis has led to heavy losses for the two parties of the coalition which negotiated the austerity package with the EU and IMF. Despite the peculiarities of the Greek parliamentary system which gives the leading party 50 extra seats PASOK and New Democracy have fallen two MPs short of being able to form a government to carry on with the EU deal. In fact it would be a travesty if they had been able to achieve it as 7 out 10 of those that did vote gave their votes to parties which campaigned against the deal.
The surprise second largest party was the so-called left coalition of SYRIZA which benefitted most from the discontent with the EU deal. It gained votes from PASOK but also from of young professionals who would lose their professional association status under the proposed EU-sponsored reforms.[11] As many of these were former New Democracy supporters it can hardly be trumpeted as a new rise of the electoral left as some are doing both inside and outside Greece. The voters have not given a vote of confidence to SYRIZA, because this party apparently lacks any serious alternative to the deep crisis. Its vote was achieved through a reaction against increasingly harsh austerity. Another paradox of the situation is that the voters want to renegotiate with the EU rather than leave the eurozone for a fistful of dodgy drachma and an even more uncertain future. The resultant confusion is political paralysis for which the only solution the Greek ruling class are offering is – another election. Not one of these parties offers an alternative to the continuation of the capitalist system which is the root of all the misery in the first place. And it is not
The Unions
Even where an increasing number of workers are abandoning hope in the electoral system there is still no clarity about a way forward. Many agree that workers should resist austerity but think that uniting as workers means putting our trust in unions. On face value the idea of all being together to force some redress has a certain appeal but it falls down on two counts. In the first place the unions don’t unite us but actually divide us. In second place the assumption behind all the union campaigns is that there is still plenty of money about, it just needs to come our way a bit more. In other words capitalism is really OK and just needs to be better run to be fairer. This is utopian but not surprising. The unions which once were real workers’ organisations are today bloated bureaucracies with paid officials on 6 figure salaries. They are a well-integrated part of the capitalist system.
All the above features were made obvious in the recent street protests in Spain after the Rajoy government announced that the austerity measures already undertaken were not enough. A further ?36 billion of cuts would have to be made to meet the agreed debt reduction target agreed with the EU.[12] Spain already has the highest unemployment in Europe and this latest cut will reduce its people to the same level of desperation as those in Greece. The anger on the streets was predictable but the unions were divided as to how to react. The two biggest establishment unions the Workers’ Commission (CC.OO linked to the Communist Party) and the General Workers’ Union (UGT – linked to the Socialist Party) tried to take control of class anger by calling a general strike (for only one day of course). The Daily Telegraph reported
In Madrid, protestors stopped traffic through the capital as they took to the streets braving the rain to protest austerity measures. Coming together for a rally in Puerta del Sol, the site of Los Indignados protest last summer, demonstrators were fired up by the words of union leaders.
"Nearly a million workers across Spain are in the streets saying 'No' to this way of understanding labour _relations," said Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, secretary general of the CC.OO union._
Eh? Were workers only complaining that the unions had not been consulted before they were sacked? We don’t think so but the emphasis is indicative of the union mentality – they just want to be asked nicely by the state before they manage our exploitation. And then they will still negotiate away our jobs and conditions. The time, however, for negotiations is long past.
The Real Alternative
The real alternative to playing the game the capitalist way is much harder to take in and, despite the misery inflicted on us, most are not yet ready to contemplate it. This is no less than the overthrow of the capitalist system and its replacement by a new social order in which money, debt and exploitation will no longer exist.
This is clearly not going to be an immediate quick fix. The process of mounting a fightback has to begin from the working class itself autonomously organising their own struggle via mass assemblies and strike committees which are accountable to those mass meetings of all the workers in the struggle. To some extent this is already happening, particularly in Spain. The Indignados and Occupy movements have helped to raise the political awareness of the need for an anti-capitalist agenda. In some places the mass meetings have recognised that the real secret of success is to keep everyone involved by having wider debates about the current situation and what we do now. To take one example, here is an extract from a leaflet put out by the Workers’ Group of Palencia:
FOR A STRIKE WITHOUT INTERMEDIARIES
Once again the ruling class has reminded us who is in charge; this time with the Labour Reform which leave workers even more at the mercy of the employer. From now on, whether you keep your job or not will depend exclusively upon the boss’s need to maximise profits. This is not due to this or that government but rather expresses the fact that for Capital we are nothing more than commodities. Faced with this prospect we have no other option than to struggle: What should this struggle be? How to carry it out?
The majority unions offer us their model: they command, we obey. They make a lot of fuss about the Labour Reform, but at the same time they cut deals that make things worse for the workers. In reality, our rights are of no importance to them. For them we are nothing more than a number that justifies their existence and their subsidies. What is important to them is that we are exploited and enslaved while they continue their charade! They are nothing more than puppets in the service of the capitalists. Their real function, which is why they continue to exist, is to absorb, divert and subdue the real struggle of the working class; to stop it becoming a real danger to the system and its ruling class.
... we cannot follow the majority unions nor their strategies. In order to nullify all revolutionary struggle, they have agreed to hold a strike with conditions, the so-called “minimum services”. When have we ever seen a war where a pact has been signed with the enemy in order to “not cause too many problems”? The aim of a strike is to cause harm, to oblige the employers to bend before our interests. To strike where it hurts them most: the economy. This will not be done with an agreed strike and only on one day: it will be achieved through indefinite wildcat strikes.
We cannot give the traitorous unions and the opportunists on the Left of Capital more time. We must organise ourselves and without intermediaries in assemblies, in workers’ councils. Only through determined action and without conditions can we defeat the exploiters and their servants in all areas: from the stopping of the Labour Reform to the destruction of the capitalist system.
AGAINST THE CUTS
ORGANISE OURSELVES WITHOUT INTERMEDIARIES![13]
What is equally significant here is that the leaflet does not stop at a mere defensive struggle against the cuts but puts the issue of the system that causes it. This is already a step beyond that of the Indignados and Occupy movement agendas. The issue raised here is not to make capitalism fair but to get rid of it.
And this is not only a question of how we organise. It requires political consciousness. The problem is that all these movements arise now in one place then in another. Political consciousness is so hard to hold onto. Moreover, if we are to avoid the pitfalls of the past we have to take on board the lessons of our own history. In our understanding those who share the political agenda of the need to overthrow capitalism, the need for a society without money or exploitation, without a state and oppression need to get together in a global political entity which for want a better word we call a party. This party is not a government in waiting but an international fighting body whose single aim is to advance the programme of the world revolution In itself it does not take power in any place. The party’s organs are not the medium for the mass struggle. Rather the international party will fight for the establishment of organs of workers’ power (or “workers’ councils” as the Palencia workers say in their leaflet). And once these organs are established it fights within them, as part of the class to which it belongs, against any return to capitalist schemas (not least those which will be proposed by the state capitalist and social democratic left). This is obviously not a perspective which will be taken up immediately by masses of workers but it is the only perspective which offers us a real alternative. This is the perspective which we are patiently fighting for everywhere we can.
Footnotes
[1] See for example “Banking and credit, however, thereby also become the most powerful means for driving capitalist production beyond its own barriers and one of the most effective vehicles for crisi and swindling” Capital Vol III p. 742 Penguin version.
[2] bbc.co.uk UK’s Debts Biggest in the World
[3] It is this overdependence on the financial sector that has led to the total isolation of the British government in Europe over the nature and scope of the Basel III regulations. See “Osborne hand hovers over No vote on key reform” in the Financial Times 4.5.2012
[4] Report by Mckinsey Global Institute, available on mckinsey.com
[5] See “Capitalism in the Quagmire of Debt”. Those looking for our opinion on the future of the Eurozone will find more on that issue there.
[6] See blog.occupiedlondon.org
[7] See channel4.com and for the UK “Credit boom left low-income groups in debt forever” Financial Times 4.5.2012
[8] See leftcom.org
[9] See leftcom.org or read Aurora, Bulletin of the Communist workers’ Organisation. Free to anyone who sends a stamped addressed envelope to BM CWO, WC1N 3XX.
[10] ft.com
[11] In Greece there is a special status for dozens of professions. These professions are “closed” because a special permission is required in order for someone to practice. For example, a would-be notary, taxi driver or pharmacist has to buy a licence from a retiring one. The cost for a pharmacy licence is upward of 400,000$. There are more than 130 “closed” professions: beauticians, drama and dance school instructors, bakers, antiques dealers, insurance agents, insurance consultants, employment consultants, diagnostics centre staff, divers, cameramen, driving school instructors, cab drivers, tourist bus drivers, newspaper stand owners, electricians, sound technicians, private school owners, tobacco sellers, gun manufacturers and sellers, hairdressers, private investigators, port workers, real estate agents, lifeguards, carpenters, financiers, opticians, auditors, movie/theatre director and even car mechanic.
The opening of the so-called “closed” professions comes after strong pressure from the troika (IMF, ECB, EU) – however some real profit-making professions like pharmacists and lawyers will still remain closed.
[12] And to top it all more money will be needed for Bankia, the bank set up two years ago to absorb much of the bad debt is now in trouble as the banks it took on board had understated their debts and overstated their assets. It has debts of over ?52 billion. The Spanish Government has had to nationalise it in order to save the banking system but this has only added to its sovereign debt burden.
[13] This was quoted by “Ernie” of the ICC on libcom.org and we are grateful to him for pointing us to it.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Revolutionary Perspectives
You can’t fight austerity through elections!
After the replacement of President Sarkozy by Hollande in France, and the electoral slump of the parties of the outgoing Greek government, a commentator in the Guardian (8/5/12) was not alone in declaring that “Revolt against austerity is sweeping Europe.” Leftists saw “a growing backlash against austerity across Europe” (Socialist Worker 12/5/12), “deep popular opposition to austerity measures” (wsws.org 8/5/12) and even declared that “Europe turns left” (Workers Power May 2012).
In reality, whatever the level of dissatisfaction felt at election time, the ruling bourgeoisie will continue to impose and intensify its policies of austerity. Voting against governments can happen because of the depth of discontent, but it doesn’t change anything. For the working class it’s only through the mass organisation of its struggles that anything can be achieved. The election game is played entirely on the bourgeoisie’s terms, but workers still troop into the polling stations (if in decreasing numbers) because they still have widespread illusions in what could be achieved. There’s still a belief that elections can somehow be used as a means for social change, or that there are alternative economic policies that the capitalist state could follow. There has been no ‘revolt’ across Europe expressed in these elections, although there is definitely a lot of anger which has been impotently misdirected into the various democratic mechanisms. Having said that, if you actually examine what’s happened in recent elections they do reveal a lot about the capitalist class and the state of its political apparatus.
Since the financial crisis of autumn 2008 a number of individual leaders and political parties have been replaced because of their identification with public spending cuts, job losses, wage and pension reductions, and all the other aspects of economic ‘rigour’ and austerity. There is no overall bourgeois strategy, just the removal of parties and individuals and their replacement by others, whether from the left or the right or by coalitions. The ruling class is just reacting to events without a clear idea of how it will arrange its political forces in the future. And it’s not taking long for the new leaders to begin to be discredited as they are exposed as being in continuity with their predecessors.
In November 2008 John McCain was defeated by Barack Obama in the US Presidential election partly because of his connection with the policies of George Bush and the fact that the US economy had been in recession since late 2007 in a crisis deeper than anything since the 1930s.
In the UK, following the general election of May 2010, the Labour Party was replaced by a Conservative and Liberal Democrat government, the first coalition since the Second World War. The British bourgeoisie, usually so assured in its political manoeuvres, was not able to accomplish its usual Labour/Tory swap. Since the election it has also had difficulties in presenting Labour as a viable ‘alternative’.
In Belgium it took 18 months from the election of June 2010 before a government was finally formed.
In the general election in Ireland in February 2011, Fianna Fail, the party that had been the largest since the 1920s, saw its proportion of the vote go from 42% to 17%. The Irish government is now a Right/Left coalition of Fine Gael and Labour. Ireland was in recession in 2008 and 2009. It returned to recession in the third quarter of 2011. The new government has predictably shown itself no different from the previous FF/Green coalition. The myth of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ faded out a long time ago.
In the Portuguese legislative elections of June 2011 the governing Socialist Party saw its support go from 37% to 28%. Electoral turnout declined to a historically low level of 58%. Unemployment continues to rise, up to more than 13%, having been less than 6% in 2002. Portugal is in its worst recession since the 1970s. The conditions for its 2011 bailout from the EU and IMF have meant a vicious series of government spending cuts.
In the Spanish general election of November 2011 the votes for the ruling Socialist Party went from 44% to 29%, and there was growing support for minor parties. Under the conservative People’s Party Spain has fallen back into recession. Unemployment, which has been growing throughout the last five years, has reached record levels with a 24.4% jobless rate (over 50% of under 25s), the highest figures in the EU.
In Italy in November 2011 Silvio Berlusconi was replaced by a government led by economist Mario Monti. His cabinet was constituted of unelected ‘technocrats’. He has introduced a range of austerity measures – with the support of most of both Italian houses of parliament.
In Slovenia in December 2011 there was a parliamentary election in which a new party, Positive Slovenia, that had only been founded in late October, got the highest proportion of the vote. After a period of manoeuvres and negotiations the outgoing 4-party coalition was replaced by a 5-party coalition which only had a Pensioners’ Party in common, but not Positive Slovenia. With the Slovenian economy is in recession, a new programme of austerity measures was adopted by the Slovenian Parliament on 11 May. Major unions which had staged demonstrations against the programme have said they would not oppose it with a referendum. Last year four pieces of legislation were rejected by referendum.
In presidential elections held in Finland in January and February this year the long period of the decline of the Social Democratic Party reached a new low point. The new president is the first in 30 years not to be a Social Democrat. Voter turnout was the lowest since 1950.
In the Netherlands in April this year the coalition government resigned after only 558 days in power. The parties have been in dispute over budget cuts.
In the recent French Presidential election Hollande’s victory was in many ways due to his not being Sarkozy. Despite his claims to have a different approach on questions such as investment he will have no choice but to continue the attack on living and working conditions. Hollande said before his first visit to Angela Merkel that he would bring "The gift of growth, jobs, and economic activity." Although this is the usual politician’s hot air, corresponding to no material reality, at least the situation in France is by no means as desperate as that in Greece.
Following the latest elections in Greece it was clear the parties of the PASOK/New Democracy/LAOS coalition had lost the most support. It should be recalled that the coalition had only been installed last November, to replace George Papendreou’s government and implement the measures required by the IMF/EU/ECB. In the elections, despite there being a choice of 32 parties, there was a significant reduction in the number of people voting to a lowest ever figure of 65%. This contrasts with the previous low figure of 71% in 2009 and previous figures in the high 70s or even more than 80% that Greece was used to. If the French election result mainly expressed opposition to Sarkozy, the Greek result showed mainly opposition to the government coalition and the measures it had undertaken. The fact that the Greek parliament now has four parties of the Left and three of the Right where once it was dominated by PASOK/New Democracy shows the degree to which the bourgeoisie’s political forces have splintered. The prospects of a new coalition without a new election seem limited.
There has been a lot of attention in the media on the role of the leftwing coalition Syriza, portrayed as a new force without whose co-operation or tolerance no government could function. Because they claim to be against austerity they will, for the moment, quite possibly continue to increase their support. However, whether they operate as a buffer between government and striking workers, or actually join a government coalition, they do not represent anything new. Along with its anti-austerity phrases Syriza has clearly stated that Greece should remain in the EU and the euro, debts can not just be written off, but it would prefer some more benign conditions for receiving the latest bailout.
Where the emergence of Syriza is a sign of some residual flexibility from the bourgeoisie, the sharpest evidence of the decomposition of Greek capitalism’s political apparatus is seen in the gains made by Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) at the expense of LAOS. Greece has had right wing parties before (LAOS is the most recent example), and in Metaxas they had a real dictator in the late 1930s, the contemporary of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Salazar. However, Chrysi Avgi isn’t just another racist, right-wing party demonised by the Left. It’s anti-immigrant policies are backed up by physical attacks on foreigners. It has also mounted attacks on its political opponents, tried to intimidate journalists and has links with Nazi groups.
Chrysi Avgi campaigned on the slogan “So we can rid the land of filth” with candidates claiming to be more soldiers than politicians. They claim to be ‘Greek nationalists’ in the mould of Metaxas, rather than being neo-Nazis. You could be forgiven for being confused on this when you see the black symbol on the red background of their party flag. It looks very similar to a swastika, although it is in fact a ‘meander’ or ‘Greek fret.’ Whatever label you want to pin on them, Chrysi Avgi are clear evidence of the further decay of bourgeois politics. Parties in Greece that support the return of the monarchy are barred from standing at elections, but Chrysi Avgi has 21 members in the new parliament.
The Greek elections are the most obvious example of how the bourgeoisie across Europe is coping politically with the economic crisis. It can’t offer any genuine economic alternatives to austerity, but it is also using up its political alternatives as parties take their turns to impose programmes that will not challenge the impact of the economic crisis. There is no particular political strategy, just a day-to-day reaction to events. Bourgeois democracy continues to function, but the ruling class has a decreasing variety of ways to deploy its political apparatus. The number of people who are voting is in decline; new parties and coalitions are emerging to cope with changed situations. But, for the working class there is nothing to be gained by the replacement of one government by another, or in any participation in the democratic game.
All the political parties are factions of one state capitalist class. This is one of the reasons that democracy is so important for the bourgeoisie, because it gives the illusion of offering a number of different choices. For the working class only struggle on its own terms can set in motion a force that can break the social stalemate between the classes. The bourgeoisie has nothing to offer, not in its economy, and not in its elections. The working class can only rely on its self-organisation, on a growing consciousness of what’s at stake in its struggles.
Car 14/5/12
노동자 평의회의 건설 과정과 역할
노동자평의회가 어떻게 발생. 발전하는가에 대한 분석에서, 판네쿡은 평의회는 실질적인 노동자 계급의 실천으로부터 자발적이고 유기적으로 나타나고, 와일드캣 파업(비공인파업)과 공장점거와 같은 활동에 태생적 형태로 이미 존재하고 있다고 주장했다. 그는 와일드캣 파업과 공정 점거를 노동자 평의회로 전환시키는 주요 요인은, 노동자들이 그러한 투쟁을 실행하기 위하여 조직하는 파업위원회 형태일 것이다라고 했다. 그러한 파업위원회들은 평의회조직의 가장 기본적인 두 개의 요소인 직접 민주주의와 계급 자치를 구체화시켰다고 보았다. 일단 와일드캣 파업과 공장 점거가 국가적이고 전체 계급 운동으로 발전한다면, 그것들은 즉각적으로 자본주의 국가와의 갈등으로 전화될 것이다. 그리고 이러한 갈등은 보다 높은 수준의 조직을 필요로 하게 될 것이다. 판네쿡은 노동자 평의회가 모습을 드러내기 시작하는 시점은 바로 이때이며, 자본 국가가 붕괴할 때까지는 혁명과 함께 노동자 평의회의 역할은 확장될 것이다라고 생각했다.
판네쿡은 최소한 부분적으로는 와일드캣 파업과 공장점거 전술을 전통적인 노동조합에 대항하는 불복종의 한 형태라고 보았다. 그는 선진 자본주의의 노동조합들은그들이 전에 가지고 있던 모든 프롤레타리아트 정체성의 흔적들을 잃어버렸고, 또한 자본주의의 통합적인 메카니즘이 되어버렸다고 주장했다. 그는 노동조합을 독점적 자본이 독점자본의 조건을 전체 노동계급에게 짐지우는 수단이라고 생각했다. 자본의 합리성 원칙에 대한 노동조합의 헌신 때문에, 노동조합이 결코 ‘노동자들의 통제'라는 문제를 제기할 수 없었다. 왜냐하면 ‘노동자들의 통제’는 노동조합 권력의 원천을 위협할 것이기 때문이었다. 그리고 노동조합들은 지도자들에 의한 지배 원칙을 기초로 하고 있었기 때문에, 노동조합들은 결국 자본주의 국가의 충실한 재생산 역할을 할 것이기 때문에, 새로운 노동자 운동의 부활은 이 옛날의 조직에 대항한 대중적 반역의 기초 위에서만 가능하다고 판네쿡은 주장했다.
판네쿡의 생애
판네쿡(1873-1960)은 혁명과 반혁명의 시기, 여러 나라에서 활동했던 혁명가이자 지식인이었다. 천문학자로서 국제적인 명성을 얻었던 판네쿡은, 1914년 이전까지는 네덜란드와 독일의 사회 민주주의의 좌익으로 활동했다. 로자 룩셈부르크와 함께, 그는 독일 반수정주의 좌익세력의 주요 지도자로서 두각을 나타내었으며, 사회 민주주의의 정통성에 대해서 강력하게 비판하였다. 제1차 세계대전이 발발한 뒤, 그는 새로운 인터내셔널의 형성을 요구했던 선구자들 중 한 사람이었고, 이후 찜머발트 반전 운동의 유력인사가 되었다. 독일 공산주의 노동자당의 탁월한 이론가였던 판네쿡은 레닌주의에 대해서 강력하게 비판을 하면서, 공산주의에 대한 서구적인 대안적 개념 제시하였다 - 이러한 레닌주의에 대한 그의 비판으로 인하여, 좌익공산주의 내에서 레닌의 계속적인 적대감을 얻게 되었다.
그의 저서들은노동자 계급의 혁명적 자기 해방의 이론과 실천으로서의 맑스주의를 발전시키려는 가장 일관되고 지속적인 시도들 중의 하나였다. 그는 해방세상을 위한 수단으로서의 맑스주의에 대해서 그리고 선진 산업사회에서의 지배와 종속이라는 문제에 대해서 일련의 인상적인 문제제기를 했던, 흥미롭고 독창적인 사상가로 남아 있다.
수학자이자 천문학자였던 판네쿡의 맑스주의 사상은 당대의 로자 룩셈부르크, 그람시, 루카치, 코르쉬 등에 비해 상대적으로 많은 관심을 받지 못했는데, 그 대부분은 판네쿡 사상의 노동자계급 당파성에 대한 좌우의 수정주의와 권위주의 세력의 종파적 대응 때문이었다.
노동자 평의회의 운영 방법
『노동자 평의회』에서 판네쿡은 평의회 체계가 실제로 어떻게 기능하게 될 것인가를 정확하게 세부 묘사하려고 노력하였다. 평의회들은 전문가들로 구성된 것이 아니고, 또한 공장 운영에 책임을 지는 것도 아니다. 평의회의 주된 기능은 노동자들의 결정을 수행하고, 토론을 촉진시키고, 다양한 노동 집단과 공장들 사이의 소통망으로서의 역할을 하게 되는 것이다. 지역 공장 평의회는 협력하는 지역적, 전국적, 산업규모의 평의회를 다양해진 연결망으로 통합되고, 생산은 서로 연관된 하나의 전체를 구성하게 되었을 것이다. 그래서 지역 평의회의 업무를 조정하기 위하여, 중앙 평의회는 보다 규모가 큰 지역 평의회와 같은 구조에 기초하여 형성될 것이다 - 즉, 즉각적인 소환이 가능한 작업장 대의원 원칙에 기초하여 형성될 것이다. 중앙 평의회는 조정, 자료 수집, 정보의 전파에 대한 책임을 지기는 하지만, 그들은 계획을 위한 기구는 아니다. 계획 임무는 지역 평의회의 노동자들에게 주어진 일이다. 지역 평의회의 노동자들은 일단 필요한 정보를 가지게 되면, 그들은 중요한 의사결정을 하게되고, 또한 그러한 의사결정들을 중앙 평의회의 대의원들에게 전달했다. 이러한 것 이외에도, 중앙 평의회는 같은 산업 내에 있는 공장들 사이의 수평적 협동과 그들에게 부품을 제공해주거나 그들의 제품을 사용하는 공장들 사이의 수직적 협동을 유지시키는 데에 대한 책임을 지게 된다. 이런 공장 평의회의 연결망을 보완하기 위하여, 판네쿡은 소비자와 전문가 집단을 위한 수평적 연결망을 생각했다.
판네쿡의 『노동자 평의회』는 현재에도 노동자 자기해방 사상의 고전으로 남아, 수많은 나라들의 프롤레타리아트에게 읽히며, 현실 운동의 무기로 등장하고 있다. 『노동자 평의회』가 낡은 표지를 벗고 다시 노동자들의 품속에 안겨, 거리에서 공장에서 투쟁의 현장에서 해방사상으로 살아날 때, 노동자혁명의 불길은 진정 계급의 가장 아래로부터 타오를 것이다.
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